Statues
by a certain slant of light
Summary: Now Playing: JasperBella. A series of drabbles, most based around non-canon or odd pairings. Many different ships, genres, and characters! ჯ het, slash, femslash. angst, humor, romance.
1. JacobAlice

**Quintessential Author'****s Note**: And yet another drabble series! I should probably be smacked in the face for not producing fic of actual fic length for months, but I promise I'm working on it! In the meantime... more drabbles! These were most likely written for challenges, or just for fun! They are all standalone unless I've stated otherwise.

They are usually romance, humor, angst, or gen (or some combination) but may be other genres; pairings include het, slash, and femslash/femmeslash; ratings are from K to M (warnings will be posted for mature content); word count is usually one hundred to six hundred. Updates are random, but usually at least four days apart. Spoilers for all current books (Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse) **–** any other spoilers will be marked accordingly. Most drabbles will be of non-canon pairings **–** if that's not to your liking, this might not be the place for you. Of course, comments are appreciated and loved!

**I'll say this only once**: Non-canon. You don't want to read it? I don't want to hear it. It's fine with me if non-canon isn't your cup of tea. But if that's the case, save us all some trouble and kindly just click the back button. Thank you.

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Twilight or any of the franchise characters, settings, or trademarks featured in these drabbles. This includes any sequels, prequels and threequels in any form. This applies to all current and upcoming chapters.

* * *

**Title**: Namesakes**  
Characters/Pairings**: Alice, Jacob ; Jacob/Alice  
**Author's Notes**: Written for the Twilight Uncanon Drabble-a-Thon at Kaiwynn's Livejournal!

* * *

She smelled of gasoline rainbows and bloodlust. It made his gut churn wickedly, his heart snarl wildly in his chest. He could see her scent in the night, illuminated like the neon tails of speeding cars – it wound around trees, blurred by the speed at which she ran. He matched it, wind in his eyes and ears and nose, raindrops falling in ice cold bullets.

Shreds of clothing marked her trail, wisps of reds and denims, slivers of lace. She was making it too easy; his head grew clouded with anger. Did she think he was so stupid he couldn't track her through a forest they both knew like the back of their hands?

Finally he burst into the meadow. The moon dripped through gauzy clouds in patches of light latticework. She was half in the light and half out, split down the middle. Her pearl pale flesh shone, twenty-four karat eyes narrowed and blazing.

He shivered down the length of his spine, bones twisting and snapping in symphony until he stood on two feet, the color of sap-soaked bark. Her nose twitched in distaste. He stalked forward, towering over her, shadow veiling her moonlit half and casting her in total darkness.

"Dog."

"Leech."

And the dewy grass was cold, the rain making craters in his back; but she was an ice sculpture melting under him, he a forest fire flickering at her fingertips. The world jerked and stopped, the meadow rolled.

She growled.

He bit.


	2. CarlisleBella I

**Title**: If It's Broken**  
Characters/Pairings**: Bella, Carlisle ; Carlisle/Bella  
**Author's Notes**: Written for the Twilight Uncanon Drabble-a-Thon at Kaiwynn's Livejournal!

* * *

It isn't any different than when she'd thirsted for Edward's voice, and had done anything to hear it. Motorbikes on a mud-slick track? Sure. Battling brambles and scratching her skin all to hell in vain search of a meadow? Why not. Jumping off a cliff into the devil's undertow? Gladly!

Now she could afford to be a bit cleverer about it. Preparing dinner with buttery fingers? A knife's bound to slip. Exercising the few tips she'd learned from Jake on her car? Hey, trucks have teeth. Running barefoot through a rainy street? It's not her fault someone left a broken beer bottle lying around.

She has more scars than freckles by now, like the tails of stars shooting across her ivory skin. They are stories, she says, little badges of merit for being brave and maybe a bit stupid. At the very least, it gets her used to the sight of blood, and the stitches never hurt. Like shreds of thread piecing her back together, woven by her very own angel.

He is getting suspicious, not that she hadn't expected it. She figures he must just be grateful she's killing herself slowly, like there's more time to come up with a plan to stop her. For once, Bella knows better.

She'll never stop breaking herself, as long as Carlisle's there to fix her.


	3. EmbryBella

**Title**: Second Place and a Gold Cup**  
Characters/Pairings**: Bella, Embry ; Embry/Bella  
**Author's Notes**: Written for the Twilight Uncanon Drabble-a-Thon at Kaiwynn's Livejournal!

* * *

Jacob always got there first, then Embry, then Quil.

First of their voices to deepen? Jacob's. By the time Embry's cracked in the middle of an oral presentation, it wasn't impressive at all, just funny. He remembers peals of laughter erupting from the class, the guys folding over and almost crying, the girls blushing pink and tittering behind their hands. And even Quil laughed, and Jacob just smiled like he knew.

First of them to get a car? Jacob. He didn't even have a license and he was spending every waking hour grease-monkeying around in that damn garage. The finished product was such a work of art - despite being a beat-up old jalopy - that no one wanted a spin in Embry's brand new Ford. And even Quil shotgunned riding with Jacob, and Jacob just smiled and said he'd rather ride with Embry.

First of them to turn? Actually, that was Embry. He couldn't lie: he felt a tiny rush of pride as the first inducted into Sam's game, the first let in on the secret. At night, he mused over why he'd gotten there before Jacob. Maybe it was _superior genes_. But all that failed to matter when Jacob burst onto the scene with his innate talent and buzzed haircut. And Quil even cried, and Embry just shivered down the length of his spine like there was no injustice greater.

But maybe, just maybe, that meant things were changing.

First of them to kiss Bella Swan? Well, that's the mystery, isn't it? And even Quil doesn't know, and Jacob just smiles like the world's exactly as it seems, and the quirk of Embry's lips tells you a rather different story.


	4. JaneCarlisle

**Title**: Hush-A, Hush-A**  
Characters/Pairings**: Carlisle, Jane ; Jane/Carlisle  
**Author's Notes**: Written for the Twilight Uncanon Drabble-a-Thon at Kaiwynn's Livejournal!

* * *

Volterra wraps around her in stone spires and trickling brick, and she sits there to simply _think think think_. Fantasies twirl about in her head in sugarplum shoes, eyes like sightless glass, dresses of burnt sugar. Together they weave a figure-eight across the marble floor of her mind and a film plays against the white, flickering in a faulty projector.

There is a woman, in her mid-twenties, and she is striking. Her eyes blaze blood-red, her lips rosy over rows of perfect ivory. Her shoulders cut above Heidi's, sharp planes slicing a V down her back. The ripples of her spin show, but she is _beautiful,_ like a slab of limestone carved too thin, but by a master. Red silk becomes her blood, dripping off her body, tied at the neck.

And there he is, her lovely prey, her waking dream. He smiles because he knows her, because she is older and slightly more fragile but always captivating. This… _This_ is Jane. An innocent seductress, a woman yet always a child.

She opens her eyes. They are wide with the unrealized hope of a childhood that hasn't been hers for hundreds of years. What stares back are the twin scarlets of Alec, his full mouth frowning.

"You were thinking of the leaf-eater again, weren't you?"

The flickering image of blond hair, gold eyes, and a compassion that still could not see past her permanent set of baby teeth.

"Fuck off."

Alec sighs. "All these years, and even your tongue hasn't grown up."


	5. DemetriBella

**Title**: Snakes and Ladders**  
Characters/Pairings**: Bella, Demetri ; Demetri/Bella  
**Author's Notes**: Written for the Twilight Uncanon Drabble-a-Thon at Kaiwynn's Livejournal!

* * *

"How did you find me this time?" she asks, knees bent and arms encircling her legs. The shadow falls over her like a waterfall, and but for the scarlet gleam of her eyes she is invisible.

"You dropped this." Demetri tosses her a thin silver band – a bracelet, crumpled and shapeless from his clenched fist. "You make it too damn easy."

"If I didn't, you'd be looking forever."

He'd just begun to relax, and now his fingers curl into fists again. What irritates him most is that it's _true_. Her mind's a locked box, her steps lighter than air, her scent invisible. For all intents and purposes, she doesn't exist. It must be why Aro coddles her so.

"What kind of challenge is it if you're giving me hints?"

"One you can actually win."

He growls, crossing to her pool of black and pulling her to the surface. "_Bella_…"

Her inflexible skin doesn't tingle, doesn't spark with the pressure of his fingertips, doesn't blush purple with pain. Her eyes meet his squarely, unflinching, unblinking, and the room is choked by his anger, his desire, his emotion.

In her head, she keeps the answer silent and safe: _The prize isn't really yours if you didn't earn it alone._

Unbeknownst to himself, he agrees by spinning on his heel and stalking out.


	6. AliceBella I

**Title**: Cliffsides and Swandives**  
Characters/Pairings**: Alice, Bella ; Alice/Bella  
**Author's Notes**: Written for the Twilight Uncanon Drabble-a-Thon at Kaiwynn's Livejournal!

* * *

Bella is a stupid, stupid girl. Take one thing away from her, and she flings herself off a cliff. Now there she is, lips the color of bluebirds, eyelids frozen shut. And she quivers, her pretty body rocking, because _she hates the cold_.

Alice wants to hold her, but keeps her hands away, dancing her fingertips over the quilt that keeps her safe. The world around the couch blurs, and inside this little bubble everything stops except Bella's shaking body. Alice brushes hair from her face, curled with cold. Her lips hover over Bella's forehead, her nose, her cheeks as they rush red. And her lips, like cornflowers.

_Bella jumped._

Alice draws herself away from Bella's warm breath, reminded that she has none at all, reminded that she is an icebox in the sun.

_But Alice will always be on the edge._


	7. JamesAlice I

**Title**: King of Hearts**  
Characters/Pairings**: Alice, James ; James/Alice  
**Author's Notes**: Written for the Twilight Uncanon Drabble-a-Thon at Kaiwynn's Livejournal!

* * *

She was admitted to the Bryce Hospital for the Insane at fourteen-years-old. She wore her hair long, eyes wide and brilliantly brown. She spoke of car crashes (_Alice__, darling, we don't even own a car_) and seaside sunburns (_We're in Alabama, honey, not Florida_), and she smelled of burnt sugar. Still, he wouldn't have taken notice if William hadn't first, gently guiding her into her strait jacket and telling her wonderful things between her screams.

Her hair was cut close to her head, her bright browns fading to dead bark. Her cheeks became narrow planes, her skin paper-pale and begging to be stained with red ink. James grew less and less patient, more and more hungry, with each vision she had.

_Now, Miss Mary, there's no such thing as a "micro-wave."_

_Don't be ridiculous, dear_ - and she thrashed, arms strapped to her sides and cast in sickly off-white - _my husband and I are happily married. Why on earth would I do something like that?_

But lo and behold, Nurse Peterson's husband was having an affair, and a month later she was committed to the same asylum for murdering the man she once loved.

After that, his pixie-doll was given a special room spun of padding and buttons, a single window through which to see the present. But she was always so caught up in the future that she barely noticed, only curled into the corner and saw things no one was yet to know.

William watched her through the spotless pane, his throat dry, his gold-dusted eyes sad. And it made James thirstier, made him lust, made him appreciate his caged bird and wait wait wait.

On her nineteenth, he appeared, a cold black dream amid her stark white nightmare.

"Hello," he purred to her serene face, closed eyes. "My Alice, my Alice, what say we get you out of this rabbit hole?"

Her chapped lips quirked upward, her face changed, and now he noticed – the burnt sugar had melted completely away, and now she smelled of butter. Her eyes blinked open, like fire-red stoplights. A furious growl rumbled in his chest, his throat.

"William," she sighed in her too-smooth voice.

James turned and left, door yawning open behind him. _William,_ screamed his clenched fists, his muscled stretched taut beneath the skin. _My Alice,_ shrieked the white walls in merry, merry mockery.


	8. EmmettEsme

**Title**: A Different Way**  
Characters/Pairings**: Carlisle, Emmett, Esme, Rosalie ; Emmett/Esme, Carlisle/Rosalie  
**Author's Notes**: Written for the Twilight Uncanon Drabble-a-Thon at Kaiwynn's Livejournal! Greatly inspired by **sunni-sideup**'s Carlisle/Rosalie drabble, Think About It.

* * *

Through the cracks of open doors, Emmett's world fell apart. Flashes of blond on blond, hungry eyes and shorn clothing – the world lurched one way, then the other, before a pillar of light split it all in two.

He went away. For days he was gone, moving from forest to forest, slinking in wisps through cities. The agony followed, and finally he understood. He wanted to go back, just to see Bella's face, _really see it_ and tell her, "I get it now, Bells." And maybe, if he were feeling brave enough, if he lost just enough humanity: "Let's suffer together."

But that was selfish, so he kept on. He crossed seas on rickety boats and cramped airplanes. He learned languages through his skin rather than his ears: German, French, Ukrainian.

She found him in Lyon, France. By then, he almost didn't recognize the words, it had been so very, very long. In his brain, they tumbled around in a different tongue: _Je sais_.

"Was it our fault?" he wondered. The sun through the closed blinds caught her caramel hair and skin in slats.

"If our mistake was loving too much, Emmett," she said, voice dripping with tears she couldn't cry, "then I'd make it again in a heartbeat."

He laughed bitterly. "We don't have any of those, Esme."

Her cool hand touched his face, the first contact in years, and it didn't make his stomach churn, didn't call to mind the image of golden hair and rose-red lips.

The thread looped through the fraying edges, pulling the world back together inch by inch. He wrapped his arms around her, crushing their lips together, needing to be connected to reality again.

It was their mistake. This time, they'd make it properly.


	9. QuilEveryone

**Title**: Quil Hates Everyone**  
Characters/Pairings**: Alice, Bella, Edward, Jasper, Leah, Marcus, Paul, Quil, Rosalie ; Quil/Everone  
**Author's Notes**: Written for the Twilight Uncanon Drabble-a-Thon at Kaiwynn's Livejournal! **This will make absolutely no sense to you** **if you're not familiar with the dead!Quil meme.** Very meant to not be taken seriously.

* * *

Well, this is awfully unfair. Quil sits on his favorite cloud (the only one, it wouldn't hurt to note, without a silver lining) and observes the happenings happening below him. Forks seems to keep on trucking just as it had before his death. In fact, aside from his deeply moving funeral, no one appears to acknowledge he had even gone – or that he'd ever been there.

Rosalie continues to be beautiful, which is unfair. Quil gets the business end of a brain injury, and Rosalie Hale is still Barbie's role model.

Jasper continues to be socially withdrawn, which is unfair. He is neither less nor more introverted than before. Quil gets the hickey from hell, and Jasper is still supplying everyone with their daily dose of apathy.

Alice continues to dance, which is unfair. Quil gets a murderess's make-out session, and Alice Cullen is still twirling about like a ballerina in a meat circus.

Paul continues to decline anger management classes, which is unfair. Quil gets a spill even Bella's bad luck would envy, and Paul is still shoving his friends around like conveniently people-shaped dominoes.

Edward continues to _dazzle_, which is unfair. Quil gets bitched out over crushing on the alpha dog, and Edward is still prancing about in the sun, sparkling like Jesus's freaking kidney stone.

He checks on Rosalie again, for good measure. Maybe she got ugly in the time he was watching the others. Nope, still gorgeous. Damn.

Marcus continues to look like sandpaper stretched over a plastic skeleton, which is _totally_ fair. Quil gets cornered in an alleyway, Gangs-of-New-York-style, so at least Marcus still has the complexion of curdled milk.

Leah continues to be sarcastic, which is unfair. Quil gets the worst post-coital homecoming _ever_, and Leah Clearwater is still shooting off one-liners like it's already gone out of style but shows promise of coming back in sometime in the next year or so.

Bella continues to be unanimously adored, which is unfair. Quil gets to play the role of reluctant-mistress-slash-snuff-film-star, and Bella Swan-Cullen is still everyone's favorite brand of biotch.

All in all, it is _extremely_ unfair. But, hey, this is heaven, and he doesn't have too much time to worry about people he is likely never to see again. After all, he's got ice-skating with Jesus in a couple minutes, then a game of chess with Audrey Hepburn (back when she was pretty).

Okay, so Quil's life sucked. But who is he kidding? He ought to thank Rosalie, Jasper, Alice, Paul, Edward, Rosalie some more, Marcus, Leah, and Bella - his death _kicks ass!_


	10. JaneHeidi

**Title**: Pawns**  
Characters/Pairings**: Heidi, Jane ; Jane/Heidi  
**Author's Notes**: Written for the Twilight Uncanon Drabble-a-Thon at Kaiwynn's Livejournal!

* * *

Jane enjoys seeing her like this. She's always coated in animal skin, dyed man-made colors or softened by the sun; she'll stand unnaturally on points, crushing her granite toes together. Like this, in flowing floral cotton and bare feet, she is lovely, beautiful, and Jane's perfect lure.

"Janey-Jane," purrs her subordinate, as she wraps her arms around her. Jane is swimming in a black leather jacket, cold zipper tickling the bare skin beneath. "Look at you, all grown up."

Jane growls. "Don't play with me, Heidi."

"But you're a child," her voice is very plain, and that is so much worse than mockery, "if I can't play with you, what can I do?"

She spins from Heidi's grasp, leather quicksilver, scarlet eyes narrowed. It pulls her whole face down and in, sharp eyebrows slicing creases along her nose. The curtain of her full lips is drawn back, ivory stars gleaming. Heidi sighs contentedly before being slapped across the face. The pain sparks hot on her cold skin, forcing her eye shut. The ground rises up to meet her, dirtying her dress and skin.

"You're the child!" shrieks Jane from above.

Heidi laughs, gold hair spilling over her broken face. "Janey-Jane," she sings, getting to her knees, almost enough to be on eye level, "you play my favorite games."

A feral hiss rips from her throat, then she crushes her tiny lips to Heidi's, stick-thin body painting her skin purple. "And who loses?" Jane asks roughly, words ghosting over her throat.

"Ah, but that's why they're my favorite," says Heidi, twirling a lock of baby-soft hair around her finger. "We both get to win."


	11. SamEmmett

**Title**: Breach**  
Characters/Pairings**: Emmett, Sam ; Sam/Emmett  
**Author's Notes**: Written for the Twilight Uncanon Drabble-a-Thon at Kaiwynn's Livejournal!

* * *

"She broke the treaty." Sam's voice is insufferably smooth, without emotion.

"We were going to leave," hisses Emmett. His entire body shakes, rocked by fury and grief. "You knew that."

He scoffs, breath bitterly hot. "You think that's enough, bloodsucker? She murdered Quil. You expect us to wave you off? Huh? Throw you a fucking going away party?"

A snarl builds in Emmett's chest, splitting the air and the earth as he lunges like lightning for Sam's throat. In a moment the man is gone, the wolf outlined like a blot of black ink against the moonlight. Sam's teeth rip into Emmett's left shoulder; he twists, clawing at Sam's eyes, coating his steel fur in crimson. The rest of the pack must hear his thoughts, but stay away. The other Cullens, Edward especially, allow him his space. So they fight, flesh shredding fur.

Until Emmett is trembling too hard, and is thrown onto his back, pinned by monstrous paws. Sam shifts; his blood-stained hands are neither forceful nor angry. He merely holds Emmett down while he cries tears he doesn't have.

"It had to be this way," Sam tells him.

And somewhere in his silent, empty chest, Emmett knows it's true.


	12. EdwardRosalie I

**Title**: Like Knives**  
Characters/Pairings**: Edward, Rosalie ; Edward/Rosalie  
**Author's Notes**: I was reading Twilight fic the other day, and I was overcome with the urge to write anything and everything, and _now._ So that's what I did. I just wrote. And... and this is what happened.

* * *

She wanders around in the darkness, because her eyes feel like knives against the tender flesh of her eyelids, and if she opens them she'll only have to close them again, and it will cut, cut, cut. Her forehead rests against the glass, but whether she is inside or she is outside, she doesn't know. Frost beads along her eyebrows, turning the tiny hairs to white icicles.

She is a statue. She is beautiful, but implacable. She is timeless, but empty – or full, full of concrete and marble, too full for a heart or a brain. Only a face, a pretty face. And she was shaped by a sculptor's hands, in a time when that used to be enough.

Her fingers dance along the window pane, over the latch that keeps her world private. The metal is cold, paint chipping over the mud-colored metal. It fits into the lock securely – but it trembles under her touch. It bends. It squeals and off comes more paint, more paint, until the metal shivers. It is naked, and she clothes it again in the ridges and swirls of her fingerprints. But it clashes, it clashes, so she presses harder… and it snaps.

The predator can get out now, and the prey in. But her eyes stay closed, the swords sheathed. For now, she can pretend it is only glass, matte and dense with fog – where it is actually clear, and if she dared to look, it would light up bright red and scream like a siren.

She has broken a promise to someone. To God, to Vera, to herself... She has broken a promise, and she is being punished. She is being carved again, here against a wall, palms as flat and hard as flint. She is waiting for the lightning to strike the metal of her bones and electrocute her. She is waiting for the warmth of Hell.

It comes. It creeps reluctantly, snaking around her waist, hard but hot. Like iron bars stretched into the flames of a fire, forked to mimic her silent tongue. Long ago, it might have been like that – so that's what her mind calls into being, summoning a warmth that isn't there.

"It passes." The words give it an identity, a name. _Edward's_ voice is smooth as molten gold, his breath hollow along her throat.

Her eyelids itch, her heart constricting like a wild thing in chains, that rears and bucks. Air whistles through her veins; the wind shakes the trees beyond the window, ghosts singing cemetery songs.

She draws her hands from the broken latch and balls them into the fine fabric of his shirt, every thread squealing beneath her unbroken nails. She rests her head in the crook of his neck and shoulder, where the water doesn't gather, where the ice on her face melts in the heat she's trapped between their cold bodies.

"It passes," he murmurs, hands stiff around the blades of her shoulder. He swallows, throat tensing against her... then he is a statue too.

Her lashes flutter open and she stares fixedly at the holes she's scratched in his clothing, the thin pinstripes she's left on his skin.

"It passes," she whispers, ruby lips wet and glistening. Her lungs shriek in the silence, _But that's exactly what they told me about life._


	13. TanyaRosalie

**Title**: Missing Pieces**  
Characters/Pairings**: Edward, Rosalie, Tanya ; Tanya/Rosalie  
**Author's Notes**: For Kaiwynn at the Twilight Uncanon Drabble Request Meme at my writing journal.

* * *

"Let's see this newborn of yours."

Edward put himself between Tanya and her next disaster, but she sidestepped him (she was too good at that) and closed her spiderleg fingers around the doorknob. When it opened, he caught a fresh glimpse of Rosalie's anger: scratches painted along the wall like abstract pictures, lacking meaning or reason; and satin corpses on the floor, what used to be drapes. The door closed with a quiet clip, but Edward heard. He could always hear.

_Pretty._ That was Tanya. Her mind worked slowly, deliberately – thoughts dripping like water droplets into a pond.

_Pretty._ And that was Rosalie. Her thoughts raged like waves on a choppy sea, and nothing lasted. A spark of something hopeful might surface, only to be swallowed again. Drown, drown, drown.

Edward waited by the door, prepared to burst in and stop the cold war from igniting between the two of them. Words slithered from the cracks in the wood, through the keyhole: Tanya told her Rosalie her name, then asked hers. Rosalie spat out a barbed reply, clipped at the end by her scissor lips.

_Stupid,_ thought Tanya, amused.

_Stupid,_ though Rosalie, annoyed.

The floorboards creaked suddenly – Tanya crossing the room and kneeling. Rosalie's mind went churning, thrashing on about hands and lips and…. Edward placed a hand to his temple. Damn Tanya. He was about to throw open the door when…

Rosalie's thoughts calmed a bit. _Perfect._

Tanya's revved with selfish delight. _It'll do._


	14. JasperBella I

**Title**: Razor's Edge**  
Characters/Pairings**: Bella, Jasper ; Jasper/Bella  
**Author's Notes**: For Roanna at the Twilight Uncanon Drabble Request Meme at my writing journal.

* * *

Edward had gone back on his word, which made Bella what most women twice her age were: wed and unhappy.

The moment their honeymoon was over, they moved to West Virginia – a snap decision on Edward's part, effectively shielding them from Alice for the time being. The one thing he didn't factor in was Bella's own resilience: while he was out shopping for a bed-frame, she caught a plane back to Washington.

When she arrived, Jasper was alone. Carlisle and Esme had left with Alice for West Virginia the day before, Rosalie and Emmett were in Europe… but Bella felt time more than ever, heard it ticking away like a pindrop heartbeat. Alice would have arrived by now – already arguing with Edward, a battle she'd lose. Then Edward would never let her out of his sight, his white knight complex be damned.

It took her nearly a day to convince him, shadowing him through the halls and through the forest and almost past the treaty line. His lips were set in a thin white line and he was implacable.

_Bella, I can't._

But she knew his weakness, saw the one faulty brick in the wall of Troy. She caught him in the kitchen just as the gravel outside squeaked: they were back. All of them, Carlisle, Esme, Alice, and Edward, and though her future was set to be a long journey, it was road map compared to an atlas. This was her last chance.

_What are you... Don__'__t!_

_You love me. You'll stop. I'm sorry._ And she drew the knife across her skin. A ribbon of red appeared, bubbling and curling down her arm. He was on her before time could force another tick, but his teeth drove into her throat and not the wound she'd created for him.

A scream came from the car – Alice, with what used to be the future, what was now the present, carved into her eyelids. And through three days, Bella would remember this exact moment: Edward's eyes, frozen wide and terrified; and Jasper, hands on her hips, drinking the minutes of her life away.


	15. AliceBella II

**Title**: Girls' Night In**  
Characters/Pairings**: Alice, Bella ; Alice/Bella  
**Author's Notes**: For Twirly at the Twilight Uncanon Drabble Request Meme at my writing journal.

* * *

"You can't be serious."

A grin softened Alice's pixie-sharp features. Bella always claimed to be clumsy, but tonight was the first time Alice had seen proof: a mishap with a pitcher of coke left Alice laughing and a fizzing puddle rippling outward from Bella's feet.

She was wrapped in a towel, soda glistening on her not-very-recently-shaved legs and turning the straps of her white bra brown. She was so cute, so _human_ – but that didn't mean there wasn't room for improvement. To Alice, an aesthetic upgrade was sprawled over the bed: red leather pants and a sequined tube top. It wasn't an unfamiliar outfit: Alice had worn it at their graduation party.

"First of all," Bella said, when she made no allusion to joking, "I can't pull that off –"

"Won't know till you pull it on," Alice cut in.

She scowled and continued, "And second, this is a slumber party. We're not going club-hopping." Her eyes flickered to Alice's and she quickly added, "And we're never going to."

"I can dream," sighed Alice, to which Bella replied, "No, you can't," and Alice laughed again.

"Just humor me," she said.

"Looks like I'm already humoring you," she muttered. Then she said, louder, "Can't you get your kicks somewhere else? I'll let you braid my hair. For just a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, Alice. One-time offer."

That was tempting. Rosalie never let Alice anywhere near her hair, and her own was too short for even a modest little ponytail. But the stakes were too high, the victory too near, the vision too irresistible – and the tiny, squirming desire in Alice's stomach too damn greedy.

"Nope!" she said perkily. "Those pants or that towel. Take your pick."

Bella groaned. "Then I'd really rather wear nothing at all."

The air around her sparkled with sarcasm, but Alice pounced. Before she could protest, Bella was beneath quick, nimble hands. Her soda-stained shoulders stuck to the pants pinned under her and the loose knot in the towel unraveled.

"Has anyone ever told you you're too literal?" Bella asked, nearly breathless.

Alice's lips fell to her neck, smiling against her skin. "Has anyone ever told you vanilla coke is my favorite?"


	16. EdwardLeah

**Title**: A Losing Game**  
Characters/Pairings**: Edward, Leah ; Edward/Leah  
**Author's Notes**: For Medoraly at the Twilight Uncanon Drabble Request Meme at my writing journal.

* * *

Her thoughts thrashed at the cracks of her skull like an animal in a cage. They were volatile and shrieking and a repetitive, broken loop: _Sam, Emily, Dad, Seth, wolves…_

And then there was the undertow to the spitting waves: her hatred of God, her utter disbelief in a higher benevolence. It suited him. Carlisle's actions were still driven by his religion, and he had left his mark on everyone, even Rosalie. They were yearning for Heaven, one day, after the sun had gone out and the stars were just dust in the atmosphere.

But Leah believed in nothing better, nothing _good_. She wanted here and now, to hurt and be hurt. She wanted lines drawn across her skin in red thread, to watch them sew themselves up but deny that anything ever heals. She wanted to sink her teeth into his throat and see the other side, the fast and cold and dead.

_What would happen if he bit me?_ she often wondered. But he was careful to keep his lips closed over her sweat-slick flesh, his tongue taunting her and nothing more.

She never asked for more – she never _asked_ for anything. She never wove her fingers through his hair and forced him that little bit farther, just past the thin layer that kept their worlds apart.

For Leah, eternity was too long. For Edward, the present was barely long enough.


	17. JacobJessica

**Title**: Noble**  
Characters/Pairings**: Jacob, Jessica ; Jacob/Jessica  
**Author's Notes**: For Rosweldrmr at the Twilight Uncanon Drabble Request Meme at my writing journal.

* * *

_What's your name?_

_Jessica Stanley._

_And why would you like to work at Barnes & Noble, Jessica Stanley?_

_… Because books are awesome?_

She wasn't stupid, but that's the look the interviewer gave her (two years younger than her, for god's sake, and pockmarked with acne). But she got the job anyway, because after a very long pause he laughed – and after a very long training week, he was still trying to get her number. The lovesick puppy routine reminded her a bit of Mike, which won and lost him points in equal amounts.

Jessica had no moral standing on books at all, really. When someone asked her opinion, she recited a general template and filled in the blanks. When it came to stripping the books, she didn't weep for the poor pages and dead trees like some of the younger girls. Books were paper, paper was money, money was school, and school was more books.

And that, in short, was Jessica.

The first time he came in, she was working a return. She caught brief glimpses as he dipped in and out of the aisles, not really looking for anything: there was no relation between cookbooks and harlequin that she could imagine. He wasn't wearing a shirt, and one of the older ladies quickly shooed him out. He caught her eye right as he disappeared out the door.

He was back a week later. She was stacking a new shipment of _Toopy & Binoo_ in the children's section. Again, he zigzagged through the stacks with no real purpose, but at least he was wearing a shirt. She peeked over her shoulder once or twice, and each time found his eyes on hers. He was looking at her like he was looking at the sun: something blinding, beautiful. She turned back to the shelf before her legs went to jelly and she fell off the ladder.

Jessica was on customer duty two days after, having mostly forgotten about the vaguely familiar stranger. She'd just directed someone to an overrated author when he was beside her.

"Hi, can you tell me where I can find a book on New Zealand?"

It was likely the least romantic thing she'd ever heard – which was disappointing, given the last two days of fantasies. To hide the heat in her cheeks, she turned away and led him to the travel writing.

"Great," he said, and added as she was about to leave, "and a book on Windows operating systems. Could you help me find one of those?"

She did. It was only an aisle over. A woman with a child on her hip came up on her right and asked to be taken to the CD section – but the guy gently took her by the arm and said, "Sorry, I need her to help me find an Italian cookbook."

Begrudgingly, she took him to the cookbooks. Being dragged all over the store had her grinding her teeth; she didn't feel flustered at all anymore. Instead she surveyed him with a steady eye, and noticed the books in his hand: _Canada: A Tourist's Account, Devil May Cry 4: A Brody Games Strategy Guide;_ and the one he had just picked off the shelf: _101 Great Steak Recipes._

"Awesome," he said. "Now, could you –"

"What? Put on a top hat and dance?" she growled.

He turned to her, surprised, but there was still _that_ look. It left her feeling confused and a little naked.

"Look," she said, "I'll grab you a copy of _Stop Screwing with Jessica Stanley_ and then you can deal with Marcy at check-out. And she's not having a good day."

She spun on her heel, toward the door marked Employees Only.

"Hey – wait!" She heard the sound of books hitting the floor and then he was in front of her so quick she almost rammed into him, and so broad she couldn't get a peek at the door. "Sorry about that. I just wanted to… Uh… I'm Jacob."

"Congratulations."

"I was wondering if you'd like to see a movie?"

She'd _like_ to smack this guy in the face with _Subtlety for Dummies_ and tell him to take a number along with Nerdy Interviewer Guy, but the damn way he looked at her almost had her reeling. He was at least a head taller than her, but he wore an expression like he was looking up at a goddess. It was strange and a little freaky and _very_ flattering. It had her chest feeling suddenly empty, like her lungs and ribs and _heart_ just didn't fill the space there anymore.

Finally she managed, voice chalky, "Fine, but if you ask for directions even once..."


	18. JamesBella

**Title**: Deleted Scenes**  
Characters/Pairings**: Bella, James ; James/Bella  
**Author's Notes**: For Natatree at the Twilight Uncanon Drabble Request Meme at my writing journal.

* * *

He should have watched himself. He should have been careful. But he couldn't help it: it was poignant, it was cruel, and it would drive that Cullen boy insane. Just like his little pixie, with her straitjacket wings.

He spit on Bella's corpse.

And he left it there, in a ditch precisely in the middle of nowhere. There was no blood to draw predators, but the stink would call to them. Hopefully she'd be in gnawed fragments by the time they found her. If only he could see that. It would make an excellent extra on the DVD.

A week later, the murders started. Sporadic and senseless, completely lacking in grace. Some stupid newborn was making noise near his town, and that wouldn't do. One misplaced body and those humans, thick as they were, would put it together that _that Whitaker boy was never quite right_ and lead it back to him. He would not be moving to Europe for a murder he hadn't even had the opportunity to enjoy.

When the body count struck four, he hunted her down. She was bent over her fifth victim, siphoning blood from his veins with all the finesse of a vacuum. He pulled her off by her hair and she spun to claw at him – and they both stopped, as though frozen in a frame.

He smirked. _Perfect._ He didn't have a camera with him, but the story would tell itself. She struggled, fought back inexpertly; she flailed more than jabbed, and keened when ripped apart.

He took her home piece by piece, then arranged her messily about the room. It would take her hours to reassemble herself. In the meantime, he could dot down a slew of locations, each better than the last, and a list of new equipment: more cameras, better angles.

Suddenly, killing Bella struck James as stupid, a bank job compared to a museum heist. Now he had all eternity to document his masterpiece: he'd make them watch, all of them, as he killed her time and time again.


	19. CarlisleIrina

**Title**: Growing Old, Not Growing Up**  
Characters/Pairings**: Carlisle, Irina ; Carlisle/Irina  
**Author's Notes**: For Aeteananke at the Twilight Uncanon Drabble Request Meme at my writing journal.

* * *

Irina was sitting on the dining room table, legs swinging back and forth. She watched her dress swish about her calves as though it were the most whimsical, wonderful, natural thing.

But natural was the farthest from anything Irina was.

She hummed, high voice tinkling like bells. It didn't fill the room – it was merely strung along the air, a little ribbon trailing here and there. Too quick to touch, too fine to see. Her lashes fluttered with the music, kissing her cheeks, and she swung her head from side to side. Artificial curls bobbed along her shoulders.

"Irina," Carlisle's voice cleared the room and broke into her lullaby. She opened her eyes and smiled; her legs swished-swished.

"Carlisle?" she asked, mirroring his tone.

"This is serious." And it was. They had so much to discuss in so little time, so the Denali sent their eldest as a spokesperson. Never mind Irina's obsession with youth, with her childish façade.

"So serious," she hummed. "Can't we play instead?"

She held her hands in a pleading motion, fingertips to her lips. She looked so light, all in white and with vibrant rust hair. And it was true she played her role well. She looked innocent, happy, blissfully ignorant. When her eyelids closed and opened, he couldn't see even a glimmer of her age. Of her hatred - of everything that made her the only person Jasper couldn't stand to be around.

"No games, not right now. Please, at least put this on pause, Irina."

She pouted, and her legs stopped swinging. "That's not very nice of you. Are you calling me an actor?"

"I'm calling you a liar."

Then her wide eyes narrowed, flashing wicked bronze. All at once she was off the table and before him, tangling her hands in his hair and pulling his face painfully toward hers. She stopped just short of a kiss, the breath between their lips mingling and freezing there.

"Don't be rude," she hissed, and held him in place while he waited. Then, she pressed a small, innocent kiss to his lips and bounced. Her fingers fell from his hair and into his hands. "Now! Why don't you take me for a walk and we'll play serious a while?"


	20. TanyaBella

**Title**: He's Had It All - He's Had It Better**  
Characters/Pairings**: Bella, Tanya ; TanyaBella  
**Author's Notes**: For Kaiwynn at the Twilight Uncanon Drabble Request Meme at my writing journal.

* * *

Tanya watched the little human, her shoulders curled inward like the pages of her book.

It was a (barely) glorified babysitting job, this errand of Edward's. She wanted to rake her nails across his face when he asked – but he used that velvet voice, so reminiscent of those days before _heartbeats_ and _singers_.

It was babysitting, so Tanya decided to play.

While Bella was reading chapter one, Tanya dropped an idle comment about werewolves - _dirty, wrong, squeezed from between the legs of some filthy primordial whore_ - and nothing.

On chapter two, she took it a step further to _clumsy humans, stupid humans, inbred, frothing, herded humans._ But Bella's eyes didn't flicker a moment, away from Heathcliff and Catherine.

Tanya waited a while. A lull between plot points, to build suspense. Then she went by name: _lying Edward, unfaithful Edward, delicious Edward_ and Bella said, "He said you might say that." _Predictable, untrustworthy Edward. Meddlesome Alice._

It took until the middle of the book, when the pages were bent back like broken wings and the spine was at its weakest, that she struck with, _I've been very rude. We're not on opposite sides, after all, are we, Bella?_ And she trailed her fingertip from the back of her neck, summoning a shiver, down to the dip of her shirt collar. Her lips dropped to Bella's ear, and she nipped – oh so gently – the flesh behind her ear. _So who does it better? Him or me?_

Bella rocketed up from the couch and turned, tears in her eyes as her chest convulsed with shock, with confirmed suspicion.

_Horrible Tanya. Heartbreaking Tanya. Clever, wicked, clever Tanya._


	21. EdwardAlice

**Title**: Daydreaming Reality**  
Characters/Pairings**: Alice, Edward ; Edward/Alice  
**Author's Notes**: For Supermars at the Twilight Uncanon Drabble Request Meme at my writing journal.

* * *

Alice found the only shadow in her room and clung to it, the way a moth clung to light. It dripped from the cracks between the padding, starting at the ceiling and amassing more, like water droplets on a window. Where it pooled, she planted her feet and huddled and closed her eyes.

As always, there was the stunning blond boy. She caught whispers of what he was doing now: wandering through New York, the same morose look on his face. She recognized Binghampton from a vacation her parents had taken her to. They said this was going to be a vacation as well – right before they shaved off all her hair and introduced her to her special jacket.

When the reel of the soldier ended, then began her favorite. It always came after, but it always lasted longer. These days it would freeze or jump or stutter, as though electricity was still bouncing through her brain after therapy.

He was unhappy, at the moment or at a moment coming up very soon. Quite unhappy. Then a blonde materialized on his arm and he shirked away, as though her fingers were darts. For some reason, this made Alice pleased. And the film rolled on in a similar way. Bronze hair blazing, he moved from scene to scene without a line of his own.

She kept her eyes shut as she was forcibly drawn from her darkness. Now he was wearing the strangest clothes, moving in the strangest silver box. Rain pitter-pattered against the windows of it, casting little patterns. It looked like his face was melting – the reflections of raindrops were all that moved over his stony eyes and mouth.

Loops of leather wrapped around her wrists and ankles. Someone murmured a lie about bracelets, but Alice wasn't listening. She'd never seen this far into his life before, into his future.

He stepped onto slick pavement. Something cool kissed her temples; the reel jerked to him sitting at a table, a faucet shining like his moving box.

When the machine began to hum, everything sped up. Suddenly his life was erratic, changing – his lips opened in a laugh, or his eyes filled with sadness. And right there with him was his muse for living. Her hair was a color not so very unlike Alice's mother's, her eyes the same dewy brown as Alice's own. When he looked into them, it was as though he were filled with so much emotion he couldn't hold it in.

And it wasn't the bracelets around her ankles and wrists, or her bare head strapped to the table. It wasn't the electricity ramming into her brain and singing her eyelashes. It was something else – something she didn't know, never had known, and never would know – that sent tears dripping down her cheeks, just like the shadows.


	22. EdwardRosalie II

**Title**: Rain in the Gutters**  
Characters/Pairings**: Edward, Rosalie ; Edward/Rosalie  
**Author's Notes**: For Worthless-Hope at the Twilight Uncanon Drabble Request Meme at my writing journal.

* * *

From the newspapers, she looked beatific – kind, generous, glowing. Across the tiny bookstore, her gaze darting to him over hardcovers, she glowered. Her irises sparkled a noxious, poison green, and her lips cut downward in a disapproving frown.

_He's beautiful,_ she thought, and was obviously perturbed that he didn't appear to be thinking the same about her.

Nonetheless, she stopped in every second day, and every third visit bought something. Usually a cookbook she'd never look at, or sewing guides for the clothes she'd have her servants make. Occasionally she'd bring Royce in, for she enjoyed the way Edward responded. Her fiancé's thoughts were annoying and sickly self-centered, twisted farther past Rosalie's narcissism than she could ever imagine; it made Edward's shoulders stiffen, his knuckles whiten over neatly lined spines. He wanted to warn her – but then she glared, again and again, and he kept his mouth shut.

The night he found her, spoiled in the street and naked, her eyes were the softest moss he'd ever seen. They were wet and glistening – honest for the first time, honestly _afraid._ She caught his eye for a fraction of a second, before her breath became shallow and her lashes fluttered closed. But it showed - _somehow_ she knew Edward could have stopped this. She didn't seem angry… only sad, only hollow and wondering.

He heard Carlisle four blocks away, already drawn by her scent, and he disappeared.


	23. TanyaIrina

**Title**: To Die Today**  
Characters/Pairings**: Irina, Tanya ; Tanya/Irina  
**Author's Notes**: For Kaiwynn at the Twilight Uncanon Drabble Request Meme at my writing journal.

* * *

Everything dies. Alaska becomes a country unto itself, but it's useless. North America is a wasteland populated in sparing clusters. Somehow, somehow, they find themselves in the New British Empire, recent conqueror of Volterra.

Their race is loud now. Hunted. Months back, Carmen was seized straight from Eleazar's arms and torn apart by the Traitors. Eleazar gladly followed. Kate fought viciously, refusing to flee with Tanya and Irina. And so they crouch together, alone, in the shadow of a brownstone. Their skin is streaked from the bars above, separating their sewer from the world outside. It's crowded and full of toxic little heartbeats that are slowly driving the two of them insane.

Days pass, knee-deep in the gutter. Water creeps up cotton, turning all Irina's dresses a sickly off-white. It's the color of teeth pulled from their faulty roots and strewn about a skull. The filth wears away at Tanya, as well. At her shell, shearing the enamel in soggy strips. Now she doesn't mind wrapping her arms around Irina when she shivers – and her fear is just like a child's, just as raw, the only part she's managed to preserve.

But even the rats perish as the world is brought into a new era of sunlight. They notice as less and less trash floats along the water, until it runs nearly clear around their ankles. And then the Traitors come, torchless with their perfect vision. Even the shadows can no longer protect the last of the Denali.

They won't go like that. They've lived too long and loved too little. Irina, always brash and newly honest, rips her heart out first. The Traitors pause, watching curiously – Demetri, a former lover, halts a newborn soldier and awaits Tanya's response. Without thinking, she plucks the silent sliver of humanity from her chest. Removing it doesn't feel like anything, not even an itch, but to _see_ it… Tanya's in Irina's hand, Irina's in Tanya's, and the water reflecting off them both… It's almost like they're beating. Together, it doesn't hurt for them to stop.


	24. EdwardTanya

**Title**: Il Mio Cantante Di Pietra**  
Characters/Pairings**: Edward, Tanya ; Edward/Tanya  
**Author's Notes**: For Windblownglass at the Twilight Uncanon Drabble Request Meme at my writing journal.

* * *

Years of humans, heartbeats, and _singers_ spark the fire in her ribcage. It licks and flares and dies. The bone has burned away and it's all a fluttery pile of nothing now, waiting to be blown by the humblest breeze.

_Humans get in the way,_ she thinks, alighting in his lap. He doesn't move; it's like being cradled by a statue, implacable and eroded. Tanya curls up and burrows into the hollow of his throat, smelling that same stench: stoked coals, whitened wood. _They're not forever._

As though a bolt of lightning has struck him, he breaks from his bonds of stone. His hands tangle in her hair, pulling at the spidersilk strands. His lips are cold and raw and they match hers to insufferable perfection.

Inside, she feels it stirring. The feathered flame, the phoenix. Its slashed throat stretches and noises tumble off its tongue. There's no song, but between them perhaps they can muster a tear.


	25. LeahBella

**Title**: Heaven's White-Hot Gates**  
Characters/Pairings**: Bella, Leah ; Leah/Bella  
**Author's Notes**: For Kaiwynn at the Twilight Uncanon Drabble Request Meme at my writing journal.

* * *

It was hard to keep a placid face, but Leah was nothing if not a great pretender. Billy Black's words slurred into the smoke and disappeared. Everyone was rapt, but the majesty of their ancestry had left.

Through the flames, Leah saw the sun. The girl was curled into Jacob's side, eyes glassy and wide as she listened. A knot formed in Leah's chest, tugging her over. Down her arms and legs, her muscles roped tight to keep her in place, to hold her heart inside her ribs.

_Walk through the coals, flint and tinder. Bury both your feet in ashes and the world will burn, burn._

Every detail was more vivid: her doe brown eyes, chocolate hair, the tiny little freckles along her cheeks like sprinkles of cinnamon. Pearl pink lips, broken and flimsy nails, tiny French frame buried beneath sweaters and jeans. And her heartbeat – Christ, Leah could hear her _heartbeat_. It was rough and raucous, a weathered tune.

Sam glanced over a moment. His face was as flat and humorless as usual, with the same undertone of guilt. This time, it didn't break Leah's heart. This time, she barely even noticed.

Billy stopped talking, and everyone let out a collective breath. Leah tore her eyes from the girl across the fire-pit and pretended she had been listening.

_Gravity doesn't move – it simply ceases to exist. She's become the glow around which you orbit, weightless and helplessly drawn. She's become the flame that keeps you warm – that blackens you from the inside out._


	26. EdwardEsme

**Title**: Symphony of Sinners**  
Characters/Pairings**: Edward, Esme ; Edward/Esme  
**Author's Notes**: For 49seconds at the Twilight Uncanon Drabble Request Meme at my writing journal.

* * *

She drifts into his room like a stream of mist. Her nightgown, blinding white, flutters around her ankles, and the silk ribbons flash when they catch the moonlight. Her hair tumbles over her shoulders, caramel and halfway to curling.

Mozart is playing in the background. They don't interrupt it with words; Edward merely pulls her into his lap and they lean into the couch, folding into each other's bodies until they are invisible in the fog.

_He's not home,_ she thinks. What she really means is, _It's not home without him._

Carlisle floats in and out of the house, a phantom. Work and sorrow call him away like a siren perched safely on a rock, luring her sailor into the frothing waves.

A ribbon slips around Edward's finger, the tie falling from the loop at her breasts. He places his lips to the flat plane of her shoulder and kisses until he finds where her pulse ought to be.

_I'm sorry._

His eyes are newly gold, still slivered with violent reds. The thirst and guilt and anger line the hollows of his veins and make it hard to resist much of anything anymore. He tugs; the ribbon snaps, revealing the sparsest whispers of cream-colored flesh.

The record spins on soundlessly, the music having dropped into a close. Now it doesn't hurt to speak.

"Be sorry in the morning."


	27. AlecJane

**Title**: Her Body Fits Between the Bars**  
Characters/Pairings**: Alec, Jane ; Alec/Jane  
**Author's Notes**: For Mystearicabloom at the Twilight Uncanon Drabble Request Meme at my writing journal.

* * *

There are no locks on the cellar door because, unlike Jane, he knows how to behave. There aren't shadowed sentinels on either side, or the flashing eyes of cameras watching for moments of resilience. It is only a door, three feet taller than her, of mahogany dampened like the brick walls encasing it. But when she places her palm to the whorls of wood, it feels like the prison it is.

The door creaks open and she steps inside. The room is well-lit and extravagant in the way of the Volturi, but not the way of Alec. Everything he needs he keeps hidden in a box between the mattresses, except for one thing, and that's only because Jane would never fit.

He's perched on the bed, reading a book. A page flutters softly as it turns, dragonfly wings. As she approaches, she feels it happen: something sucked out of her, some layer or piece and now she feels powerless.

"I brought you something," she says.

"Thank you," he replies, "but I don't want it."

Jane sidles onto the low mattress, hands in her lap. Only Alec can make her feel so like a child, like everything that makes her _special_ doesn't matter anymore. There's something in that that her twisted heart loves.

She curls her legs under her and loops her fingers through his. Her lips touch his cheek, the corner of his mouth. "Oh, I think you might."


	28. AroEsme

**Title**: The Long Game**  
Characters/Pairings**: Aro, Esme ; Aro/Esme  
**Author's Notes**: For Morlockiness at the Twilight Uncanon Drabble Request Meme at my writing journal.

* * *

She closes her eyes and his fingers touch the edges of her lips. To her it feels the tickle of spider-legs over sensitive skin, barely there and tingling. To him, it feels like coming down from a permanent high, only to float up again when the contact stops.

"How interesting," he muses in that sing-song, cheery way. "How very unlike Carlisle to lie."

"Pardon?" she asks.

Aro smiles kindly, lips closed – but behind that his teeth are glinting, sharp tips biting wickedly at the gums. "You didn't know?" he strings her along…

And she follows. "I'm sorry, but know what?"

"You have no ability." He doesn't think about the act at all, not when he knows his craft so well: his half-wild face drops into a look of deep concern, eyes gleaming with a flicker of pity. "To love passionately… Well, that's really nothing at all."

She swallows, eyes going from his to the ground to the walls to the ceiling. If it were anyone else, perhaps she'd smile in that way of hers and say, "But it's everything." But Aro's voice reeks of truth, coarse but smooth like weathered sandpaper. "But…"

"You mustn't blame Carlisle," Aro says, his hand falling over her shoulder like a dove alighting. Slowly he moves his fingers to her pale throat. "You were distraught when he turned you, broken. He wanted what was best for you – to make you feel special." The last word is said with deliberate tenderness, though it is the sharpest: "Loved."

Between the stone walls of Volterra she crumbles, just as he knew she would – and he catches her, whispering kind things. He presses his lips tenderly to her cheek, like a friend – but all this is to have her lips, like a lover.


	29. EmmettBella

**Title**: Careless**  
Characters/Pairings**: Bella, Emmett ; Emmett/Bella  
**Author's Notes**: For Cullen at the Twilight Uncanon Drabble Request Meme at my writing journal.

* * *

She's huddled in the gnarled wreckage of her truck. Its shell has bent around her, rolling until her head touches the ground and the wheels spin listlessly in the air. Rain runs up the windows, curling along jagged peaks of glass. Moonlight shines through the window and reflects off the shards of windshield in Bella's head. The accident has made her a mosaic of pale creams and vibrant reds.

Her eyelids hang open and she doesn't blink, though the blood burns. Beyond the cracked windshield and crumpled hood, there plays the reel of her punishment: Victoria, Edward, fire flickering a violent violet; the seconds it took her to realize _you're not turning, idiot, turn, turn, TURN!_; brief flashes of flying – long flashes of landing.

"Come on, Bella." The door at her side is wrenched away and she's pulled from the cabin shoulders first. Her lungs feel like lead, her ribs a strict binding choking her heart. She's laid over the ground and the blood starts to flow with gravity again.

His shadow is a broad blur against the trees. Her scent doesn't have him frenzying, but Emmett's struggling and losing and trembling. He laughs bitterly, as though she's playing a joke on him. "You won't make it to Carlisle, will you?"

Bella blinks for the first time in a long time. The edges of his silhouette start to lose definition, molding him into the fading backdrop.

He sighs, lifting her arm until her wrist touches his lips. "I really liked you, kid. Heartbeat and all."

She closes her eyes, waiting for the cold slice of his teeth. She slips farther and farther away, until his lips over her skin are just a distant tingle, and doesn't know if she'll ever wake up again.


	30. AroEdward

**Title**: We Wither**  
Characters/Pairings**: Aro, Edward ; Aro/Edward  
**Author's Notes**: For Morlockiness at the Twilight Uncanon Drabble Request Meme at my writing journal.

* * *

The boy's past is predictable for one of his ilk. Internal wars and ravaged survivors entice nothing but a yawn from Aro. Even his love for the human girl (only mildly fascinating herself, despite Aro's bad habit of embellishing) reads like print on a page: the same weary letters, rearranged to make something not entirely new. But every love feels like the first, feels like it's worth more than it is.

He keeps these thoughts very well guarded around Edward. Instead, he lets slip precisely sloppy memories of past lovers, some human and some not. Attached to all this is a clinical remorse – but never a longing, only an acceptance of love's fleeting nature.

It unnerves Edward, makes his hands ball into fists.

"What are you thinking now?" Aro will ask, reaching for the boy's cheek – and Edward will flinch back as though Aro's fingers are dripping poison.

Aro says goodbye, feeling only a slight twist in his chest. There is a sour taste on his tongue all of a sudden. It's loss, a learned unhappiness at watching Edward go… but Aro is nothing if not patient. He sends a last thought to Edward – poignant, slathered in the blood of a beautiful young woman – and begins to wait.


	31. CarlisleAlice

**Title**: A Fool from a Believer**  
Characters/Pairings**: Alice, Carlisle ; Carlisle/Alice  
**Author's Notes**: For Aeteananke at the Twilight Uncanon Drabble Request Meme at my writing journal.

* * *

The war takes the soldier, the mother, the lovers, the rose and her keeper. At the end of it all, they are a coven of two surrounded by the graves of many.

They live in a church, under the eyes of a god Carlisle no longer believes in. The cross on the wall bears empty holes at each point, where hands and feet were once stapled. On the ground among the shattered stained glass lies the brass corpse. The son falls, the rain falls, the trees fall… but nothing rises, not anymore.

They cover the pews with curtains and make love on the floor. She wraps her legs around his waist until she can't feel the broken wood under her back, only the moving stone of his muscles. His lips fall to her throat and he bites, and she arcs but doesn't mind because the scars remind her of _him._ For Carlisle, she supposes the grandfather clock in the corner, and the dust on Alice's cheeks, reminds him of _her._

Years wear away at their skin, thinning it to supple paper. Rot spiders from the corners of the church and out until the walls fall away around them. The wood is eaten by termites, the cloth carried away by the wind… until at the remains is the brass, rusted by rain, and them. Then they hold each other in the mud and dirt and pray to the memory of God that they should one day be with the earth again.

At sunset, the sky is streaked with fire, and they wander naked through the wilderness. They hunger so rarely and wander so often. He takes her hand in his as they silently search for life. Hidden in the fallen trunks they find rabbits, rats. With blood fresh in their veins, their throats slick, they hold each other while they wait for speech to come.

"I want to smile again," she says.

"I'm afraid I'm not very funny," he replies.

She presses her lips to his shoulder, newly red. His lightly stamp her forehead.

"I want to sleep again."

He nods. "To forget?"

Alice curls into his arms, feeling the ground give a little beneath them. "To remember."

Carlisle sighs against her skin, and then they kiss, and for this singular moment they are each thankful there is no Heaven – for _them_ to see them now would be the greatest Hell.


	32. CarlisleBella II

**Title**: You Will Surely Shatter**  
Characters/Pairings**: Bella, Carlisle ; Carlisle/Bella  
**Author's Notes**: For Morlockiness at the Twilight Uncanon Drabble Request Meme at my writing journal.  
**Other Notes**: From now on I will be posting two to three drabbles per day (one in the afternoon, one in the evening, perhaps one in the late night/early morning) because I'm getting tired of having Statues at the top of my stories list when I'm really no longer writing new drabbles, but rather posting all the ones I've already archived at my writing journal on LJ.

* * *

She chokes on the smoke and fire of her dreams, jolting awake in a coughing fit. Curdled air tumbles in and out of her lungs, and tears form at the creases of her eyes – where wrinkles are beginning to wither the skin. She's safe in her room, body protected by four solid walls… but her mind is in a bricked citadel, miles away in Italy.

Like so many nights before, Carlisle enters her room with clinical care. Bella untangles her legs and arms from the blanket and sits up, waiting. He perches on the edge of the bed and takes her hand; she leans into him, chestnut hair falling over his shoulder.

"What time is it?" she asks.

"One AM," he says gently, lips to the part of her hair.

The air in her lungs smoothes, falling out in a sigh. "Happy birthday to me."

"Twenty-three," he says. "A good age."

She chuckles hollowly at his joke. "I'm so sick of birthdays."

"Bella…"

"No, forget that. You know what I'm really sick of?" She sits up straight and pulls his hand to her chest, pressing it with useless force. Her heart thuds beneath his cold palm. "This sound."

He looks at her squarely, but that damn compassion is still there, on the very edges of his irises. "I promised him I wouldn't –"

"Is your word any better than his?" she asks, anger slashing crinkles along her nose. "He promised too, and he _broke_ his promise. Now I'm the only one left, the only one who gets to suffer for all these stupid, pointless oaths!" Her voice breaks; she rips her hand from his and cradles her temples to her palms. The room grows heady from the hammering in her chest, the constant and painful drumbeat.

"It's not a matter of pride," Carlisle says, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and pulling her to the cool silence of his own heart. "It's a matter of love."

"It doesn't mean you love him any less," she gasps. "And I'm not asking you to love me. I just want to be saved. You're good at that."

"Bella…" he says her name again, strained, but she can feel him crumbling around her trembling body. The drumming hurts him too, it haunts his house like a ghost. "He only wanted your salvation…"

"No. He wanted _his_ salvation." Her heart twists painfully at the thought of the diamond ring hidden under the floorboards. It's as though it has a beat of its own, Poe's nightmare become tell-tale reality. "I want _mine._ Please, Carlisle."

His name falls weak and feather-light from her lips. It's the last ounce of pressure needed; a sigh comes swilling out of him like water from a shattered dam. He kisses her forehead, then her cheek, then her mouth – his teeth bare against her bloodshot lips for only a moment.

"Not here," he says.

And in her mind, ever safe, she agrees. _Anywhere but here._


	33. JamesAlice II

**Title**: The Stars Hung Upside Down**  
Characters/Pairings**: Alice, James ; James/Alice  
**Author's Notes**: For Laundry Love at the Twilight Uncanon Drabble Request Meme at my writing journal.**  
**

* * *

It is oddly peaceful here. She still can't see the sky, but the shadows hang from the ceiling in a black veil, and if she pretends hard enough it's not so unlike a starless night. No more eternal sunshine, no more sickening, sterile white.

The blood rushing to her head makes it all a darkened dream. A constant pain, a little tug – not electricity rocketing through her brain in sporadic streams. _This_ is a pain Alice can bear, with her short hair reaching for the ground and her feet inches away from the rafters. Half-insane from the brain damage, she's not terribly afraid of the approaching silhouette, with fingernails and teeth that flash like knives. Fear doesn't hurt, so it can't be that bad.

He murmurs something and draws his fingers along her stomach. There is a spark of sudden sharpness, and she squirms. The rope bites into her ankles. Within moments she stills and everything quiets enough for her to hear the soft _drip-drip_ of her blood on the floor. Warmth flows down the side of her face and stings her eyes. Rust runs into her mouth; Alice coughs and spits.

The silhouette – _James_ is the name he forces her to scream – chuckles. "It's an acquired taste." Then his lips fall over hers, the wrong way around, and his tongue searches viciously for any hint of blood.

As always, he stays with her awhile – _plays_ with her awhile. She watches until she can't anymore, until she's too tired for gravity and her eyes close on the image of her blood pooling in his cupped hands, raised to his lips in greedy reverence like a grail. She barely feels her bones smash against the floor, the grainy snake around her feet uncoil. His scarlet slick palm touches her cheek – impossibly cold and soaked in the warmth of her own body, making her shiver. Ear to the floor, she listens to the tiny tremors of his footsteps as he leaves.

Alice opens her eyes. The darkness has thickened to the same shade as James's shadow. Flickers of light dance before her vision and though it hurts (_God does it hurt_), she thinks perhaps this is better than the asylum. At least James lets her see the stars.


	34. JamesRosalie

**Title**: Something Ugly**  
Characters/Pairings**: James, Rosalie ; James/Rosalie  
**Author's Notes**: For Interfection at the Twilight Uncanon Drabble Request Meme at my writing journal.**  
**

* * *

She glitters in the sunlight, golden hair dull against diamond skin. Her clothes hang from her shoulders in wispy shreds, fibers crushed under his nails. They circle each other, eyes locked: flame blackened brass against rotten apple red.

He bolts for her, catching her arm and winding it around her back as he slams her into the ground. Dust and wildflowers pour into her lungs. He murmurs something about not usually hunting his own kind, about the _ugly silence of her chest_, and then crushes his teeth into her throat. Her hair tangles on his tongue, venom gushes in and out of the wound. His fingers toy with the hem of her shirt, over the band of her bra, along her spine and the curve of her hip… He growls, primal and lusting.

In his split second of blindness, she rips her wrist from his hands. His back flattens the earth under him; she pins him with her legs, holding both his hands in one of hers, the other at his neck. The flicker of surprise on his face enlivens withered memories: a white wedding dress, a frightened groom. Years of emptiness and wondering why Royce's screams were never enough to silence her anger.

"What's this?" he hisses.

She grins, sinking her fingers into the flesh of his throat and feeling him gasp from the inside.

"Closure."


	35. AroAlice

**Title**: Like Nails Intertwined**  
Characters/Pairings**: Alice, Aro ; Aro/Alice  
**Author's Notes**: For Morlockiness at the Twilight Uncanon Drabble Request Meme at my writing journal.**  
**

* * *

The past is like rotted wood: it crusts in the rain, eaten hollow by six-legged memories, and collapses in on itself. Down, down, down it runs into the earth, sucked into the roots of living trees. Circles grow over circles, fresh ripples of life – and the branches, with so many leaves of possibility, these are what the future is like.

She looks between the boughs, gaze darting through the fog of leaves. Sun filters onto her face, and brief glimpses begin to flash. She will wed again, to her only love. They will weep together at a faraway funeral. The world will shatter, blood will run, and Volterra will open its gaping maw and devour Europe.

She sees dark-robed soldiers amid flaming pyres. She sees her skin blanched to sheets of ivory; she sees Jasper's hair curl at the ends and blacken. She sees fire in his mouth as he screams.

Cold fingertips press their prints to her cheek. Alice opens her eyes and looks into the depths of Aro's.

"Thinking about the past again, are we?" he asks.

For all the metaphors she spins, for all the beauty and nature she tries to inject into her track-mark riddled curse, the past is nothing like weathered bark and the future nothing like softly twisting roots. The two are merely arrows shot in opposite directions. They have each split the air and each wound in crescents, and each plunged straight into her head. The two are so similarly carved that she has long since lost the ability to tell the difference between them.

Aro's hand cradles her temples, where she can almost feel the shafts protruding. She squeezes her eyes shut and whimpers. Jasper's burning face is no longer a possibility, but a memory. Her knees buckle and she falls into Aro's waiting arms.

"Now, hush, little seer," he sings, lips to the crown of her head. "Think about the future now."

Her mind is blank. Alice stares into the eclipsing black behind her lids; his left hand holds her head to his chest, his right ghosting in slow circles at the small of her back. She doesn't have to open her eyes to see that the centuries ahead are only flesh of white satin, are only bone-thin fingers, are only irises of red, red wine… are only Aro. Aro. _Aro._


	36. EmmettAngela

**Title**: Alice Throws a Halloween Party**  
Characters/Pairings**: Angela, Emmett ; Emmett/Angela  
**Author's Notes**: For TunaSaladSonnet. No, I couldn't think of a good title.**  
**

* * *

He was watching the punch swirl around his glass, smirking at the unsavory tang of vodka, when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned to see Angela Weber, mostly shadow in the dim light, illuminated here and there by streams of flashing neon. He might not have recognized her if not for her height and her scent.

"Sorry to bother you," she said, tugging at the hem of her obscenely short skirt. "Do you have a t-shirt I could borrow? A big one?"

He nodded and cleared a path through the dancing guests. He'd wanted to say "wait here" but his voice was caught somewhere in his throat. Humans should not be allowed to bare so much flesh; the honey sting of her blood was painfully intoxicating. Her heels knocked awkwardly against the wood as they ascended the stairs and went to his room.

"Thanks," she said, after he'd dug quickly through his dresser and tossed her an old Redskins jersey. In the full light of his room, he couldn't help but stare: modest Angela wearing a skirt that barely kissed her thighs, a top so tight it looked like it was trying to strangle her out of her skin, and heels that had her almost eye-level.

She blushed, clumsily pulling on jersey. It hung loosely from her shoulders, swaying around her legs past the skirt's hem.

"It was Jessica's idea," she said, sitting on the edge of the bed and working off the shoes. She grimaced as one slide off her calloused ankle. "I wanted to come as Darth Vader but she said, 'Oh no, you think that will make Ben jealous?' and I said, 'I don't want to make Ben jealous,' and then she wouldn't let me leave until I put on the stupid cheerleader outfit. I don't even like the Braves."

She pulled the other shoe off, sneering as she took her foot between her hands. A streak of blood wiped onto her palm and she asked, "Do you have a band-aid?"

He didn't hear the words before the predator in him reacted. Between two heartbeats he had her pinned by her shoulders, teeth at her pale throat.

"What are you doing?" she breathed.

He struggled with the humanity inside his head, while his hands went down her arms, over her waist, to where the shirt had bunched at her hips. The warmth of her skin sent a jolt through him – and however briefly, the man won over the beast.

Emmett placed a quick, harsh kiss to her lips and was out the room in a blink.


	37. LeahSeth

**Title**: Old Wounds**  
Characters/Pairings**: Leah, Seth  
**Author's Notes**: For Constance Greene. Clearwatercest if you squint.**  
**

* * *

She's so tired of hearing their thoughts in her head, but one sick strand stands out. It's the same mantra, always connected but constantly twisting, a snake devouring its own tail.

"Would you shut up, already?" she yells, throwing her clothes on. Her voice rattles the woods around them, silencing birdsongs and nature. "Jesus Christ, Seth! Dad did _not_ love me more than you!"

"Yes he did!" he growls. He's finally tall enough to look down at her, muscles roped tight in his arms. "You were just too stupid to see it! Why do you think he always invited _you_ fishing, _you_ hunting? It was _you_ to the goddamn ends of the Earth!"

"I was going through a rough time, he was just –"

"That's you, isn't it?" His voice drops to a dangerous pitch, low and primal like the wolf he really is under all that skin. "Always going through a rough time, Leah. You never step back from the mirror and realize the world moves on without you!"

"Don't you –"

"So big and tough and blind to just how fucking pathetic you are! Do you realize you're still twenty-two? Even Jacob's forced himself to grow up! But you're stuck because you won't get your damn feet out of the mud!"

"Shut –"

"Move the fuck on!" He grabs her by the shoulders and shakes her and she can tell he wants to leave bruises. "No one's going to wait for you anymore! No one's staying behind! Are you hearing me? _Move on!_"

And suddenly she realizes that he's been in inside _her_ head too, has seen the snake and is trying his best to unwind it – even if it means snapping a few of the bones. Leah knocks his hands away and crushes herself to his chest, raking her nails along the skin of his back and cringing when he does the same. It hurts.

It hurts, but it will heal.


	38. EdwardBella, JacobBella

**Title**: Years Stretch On But We Stay the Same**  
Characters/Pairings**: Bella, Edward, Jacob ; Edward/Bella, Jacob/Bella  
**Author's Notes**: Breaking Dawn Spoilers. No Nessie. For TunaSaladSonnet. For the Breaking Dawn Write-a-Thon at Kaiwynn's LiveJournal.**  
**

* * *

He never liked _Wuthering Heights_. Ten years pass and she finds he doesn't like many of her other books either. He sneers at Austen and Nabokov, and it's only when she's reading Shakespeare (_The Taming of the Shrew_) that he smiles. She groans and that one tiny noise sets off an argument that rattles the whole house.

Twenty years, and she's outside sunbathing. Sometimes she likes to pretend she can burn like she used to. He asks if she's missing something. She says no. He tells her she's lying. She doesn't like to be told she's anything.

Thirty years, and she's cooking because she loves the smell. She remembers when she used to spend hours preparing lasagnas for Charlie, or tuna casserole or homemade pizza. All the time she used to spend cooking she now spends with books she's read four times already, so she goes out and buys food and makes it for no one in particular. He comes home from work early one day and finds her mixing a cake. The look on his face... It's like he's walked in on her with another man.

Forty years, and she's getting bored. She wants a job. She wants to be a teacher – too noticeable, he says. Too many hormones, too many accidents. She wants to fix cars – too much like Rosalie, he says. She wants to work for the newspaper. That's just fine, he says, as long as she stays away from paper-cuts. So she runs errands and buys people coffee and never once gets to write a review or an article. He asks her how her day was and she lies: fine, fun.

Fifty years, and they're sitting around the dinner table in an empty kitchen. They talk about the weather, the news, their jobs: safe things. She realizes they have nothing in common.

Sixty years, and he looks a sound twenty-five. His hair is still shorter than she likes it and his smile is too sharp. He looks at her with hatred for a moment, and then he asks her why she's here.

_I've stayed young for you,_ he says.

She smiles sadly and responds the only way she knows how. _Do you still like cliff-diving?_


	39. JacobVivian

**Title**: Seven Years**  
Characters/Pairings**: Jacob, Vivian ; Jacob/Vivian  
**Author's Notes**: Blood and Chocolate (film) crossover. For the Un-Love-You Twilight Drabble-a-Thon at Lovebuggin's LiveJournal.**  
**

* * *

She told Aiden she loved him. The words were thick with implications, drawn down by myths and rules and petty little dreams. Afterward her tongue felt swollen and her lips dry; she couldn't breathe enough, could only gasp for air. Aiden told her he loved her, and the words were light because he was only human. He didn't know that _love_ was synonymous with _betrayal._

Vivian didn't make the same mistake twice. She didn't walk home in the snow, and she didn't love out loud. She never went to Paris and she never visited Aiden's grave and she never read anything by AWG. She left her throne in Romania and moved to America; Ulf cleaned up her mess, her thinly woven spiderweb of hope. The pack hunts started again, and the sun set to her back.

Jacob never asked her what she felt. She suspected _love_ was a word he'd abandoned too, in the way he wouldn't ride motorbikes or go cliff-diving like his pack said he used to. He said her name, and he swore, and everything else was stamped into her skin by his hot fingertips.

Sometimes, they'd lie against a tree, the canopy above too tangled for moonlight, and say nothing at all. Bruises the color of lilacs made her arms pretty, and she danced her fingertips over them. He didn't tell her he loved her, and he didn't promise forever, and he never kissed gently until he'd first kissed hard… but he apologized when he hurt her.

"I'm sorry," he said, cold words against her throat. _Sorry_ was a word she knew very well, that she still kept close and used sparingly, just like he did.

"I'm sorry too."

It didn't mean the same thing as _love_, but it meant just as much.


	40. JasperBella II

**Title**: Giving to the Greedy**  
Characters/Pairings**: Bella, Jasper ; Jasper/Bella  
**Author's Notes**: For 49seconds at the Twilight Uncanon Drabble Request Meme at my writing journal. The last five drabbles in this series are all Jasper/Bella. **  
**

* * *

She's braced against him, her back to his chest. He won't ever hold her the right way around, won't have her heartbeat frenzying out of her ribs and into his. Because that close is too close, and her story is only ever a word away from ending.

But like this, he can feel her sweat and exhilaration. The air around her must be blinding him, her excitement is so brilliant. Jasper doesn't take notice. He merely drops his head to the crook of her neck, eyes closed, and syncs their breathing.

"You didn't hurt me," she tells him. His arms tighten around her waist and shivers; their bare skin together is a constantly waging war of hot and cold. Then he moves his fingers over her stomach, feather-light and feeling. She winces and he pauses – he's hit the bruise at her hip.

"And that?"

"Doesn't hurt," she says. Gently, he touches it again – but it's like butterfly wings, taunting the nerve endings and sending mixed signals to her brain. Her back arcs against him and finally he lifts his head. She shifts in his embrace, turning to face him. Jasper places distance between them, keeping her heart away.

"You got excited," she says, voice stuck halfway between adamant and pleading. "That's okay. I'm not going to break – I'm not porcelain. I'll heal."

"You shouldn't have to heal."

"Well, we all know the solution to that."

This time, he winces. Bella sighs and takes his hand in hers, guiding it to the gentle drumbeat. "One day, you're going to lose control, and I still won't regret a thing."

"I wish you'd have more faith in me."

She smiles, broadly like she possesses a secret he's oh so close to knowing. "I do. Because I know you'll regain control right after. In the meantime, it's bruises or blood."

He draws his hand away, down over the curve of her waist, to the small of her back. "I thought you didn't like ultimatums."

She closes the space between them, catching his lips in hers and pressing her thundering heart right to his quiet chest. "Then how's this for a compromise?"


	41. JasperBella III

**Title**: Underneath**  
Characters/Pairings**: Bella, Jasper ; Jasper/Bella  
**Author's Notes**: For Cullen at the Twilight Uncanon Drabble Request Meme at my writing journal. **  
**

* * *

Beneath the table, Bella wound her fingers through his… and he sent a wave of repulsion into her. Her hand snapped back like a bungee cord pulled taut, her lips curling up in a grimace. Angela asked if she was all right. Bella nodded, confused by her own answer.

He drove her home, and she leaned to rest her head on his shoulder. Anger suddenly flared in her, hot and fresh frustration. At what, she didn't know. When the car squealed onto the curb, she hastily thanked him – tone clipped, venomous – and slammed the door shut behind her.

At the graduation party, she stumbled into him the hallway. She took hold of his arms to right herself… and didn't let go. She watched him, his face obscured in the dim light, his hair faded to muddy blonde and streaked with the reflections of flashing reds, greens. Sadness rippled outward from her chest; her lips fell into a frown, her eyelashes damp. This one he had been saving for the both of them, so they each knew exactly how much it hurt to push her away and push her away.

But Bella's hands didn't drop to her sides, nor her shoulders droop with the weight of this misplaced emotion. Instead she gathered the resolve she'd buried deep. where he couldn't see. She surged up onto the tips of her toes and crushed her lips to his and met his resistance with her own: repulsion faced desire, anger faced ease, depression faced euphoria.

Jasper's fingers wove into her hair and he felt something in him being drawn out – something small, something hidden. He'd pushed and she'd pushed back, and in the explosion between it all, she'd found the survivors of his shipwreck. Maybe there would be more. Maybe this would only slaughter what was left.

In the background, the music pumped, and a tangled web of human frivolity pulsed – and Jasper, lips to Bella's, feeling _passion_, didn't care.


	42. JasperBella IV

**Title**: You Saw Her Bathing on the Roof**  
Characters/Pairings**: Bella, Jasper ; Jasper/Bella  
**Author's Notes**: For Cullen at the Twilight Uncanon Drabble Request Meme at my writing journal. **  
**

* * *

Leonard Cohen is playing on the radio as she rips at it. A nail snaps, another hangs on her little finger and waits to fall. The song crumbles into white noise when Bella claws at the cables, pulling on them like hair as they snake around her hands and wrists.

_I've seen your flag on the marble arch…_

"Shut _up_!"

A sudden tranquility hits her, a softer eddy in a swirling sea. Her bleary eyes focus on the box in her hand: broken, scarred. It's all the clarity she needs to give a last savage effort. She pulls with all her meager weight and the radio snaps free, fizzing as its veins are severed. Bella tumbles off the seat, out the open door to land in a crumpled mess on the ground. The radio gives a last mournful stutter beside her.

She shakes with all the force of nothing – curled into a ball on the gravel and moving in tiny tremors. Air fills her lungs in floods and draughts, never the right amount. Little rocks pattern her skin like messy lace and the rain weaves itself into her hair; down it drips, curving over her cheeks and turning tart with salt.

It could have been a minute, it could have been a day. The sky is ever-changing shades of grey and the air is thick with moisture. Arms loops beneath her legs and around her waist, pressing damp fabric to her skin, and she's carried inside.

In the silence between two heartbeats, he lays her on her bed, pushes vines of hair from her eyes. His aren't the same strain of sunlight she remembers – these are more like bronze, sprinkled with gold dust. Bella presses her lips to the palm of his hand, again and again.

Jasper nods toward the radio on her nightstand – he must have salvaged that too – and asks softly, "You don't really care for music, do you?"


	43. JasperBella V

**Title**: All the Time in the World**  
Characters/Pairings**: Bella, Jasper ; Jasper/Bella  
**Author's Notes**: For Pexylexy at the Twilight Uncanon Drabble Request Meme at my writing journal.

* * *

It's unlike anything he's ever seen. To witness something new after 163 years is exhilarating to the point of pain.

A human among vampires, living - _laughing_ - as though this were normal. Her smile, the genuine happiness she brings out in all of them, should help placate the raging beast inside him. Instead it seethes, hardened to diamond after so many decades alone. It growls and it bucks and it rakes its claws along Jasper's skull, shearing away the sanity.

There's so much love he can't take it. It smothers the room, eclipsing doubts and fears and rationality. Like rope, grainy and primitive, it wraps itself around his neck and pulls taut until the only options left are kill or be killed.

He sows the seeds where the sun can't reach them. Over her bed, he whispers his name into the shell of her ear and cushions her in ease, elation. Then he says Edward's and the fear he injects is like bubbles of air, silently bursting apart her heart.

Soon she smiles less, is reluctant to fold her palm into Edward's. When he kisses her, she darts away so that he only catches half her lips – and then she laughs hollowly, as if it's only a silly mistake. Moments later her eyes flicker to Jasper's and something like confusion floods out of her, guilt and fear and _need_.

In another life, perhaps it would be different. If fate had taken another turn at the crossroads, Jasper might not be so attuned to the empty chasm of his chest. Watching Carlisle and Esme, Emmett and Rosalie, Edward and _Bella_ might not feel like torture – strapped to a chair, eyes pried open, forced to witness everything you could never have.

They fall away, with Bella in his arms, shattered, scared and lusting. He holds her a bit too tightly, fingertips driving into her hips, as he slowly loses the last shreds of his humanity – and clings with all the life he hasn't got, to salvage hers.


	44. JasperBella VI

**Title**: For Tonight I'll Lay Here With You**  
Characters/Pairings**: Bella, Jasper ; Jasper/Bella  
**Author's Notes**: For Cullen at the Twilight Uncanon Drabble Request Meme at my writing journal. This is the last drabble for a while. Thank you for reading!**  
**

* * *

"I don't think this is fixing me," she says, curled into his side. There is no barrier of a blanket between them; she shivers, spots of cold raised along her arms. He pulls her to him by her waist, mindful of her glass ribcage.

"I know." _Everyone knows._

His arms around her hold her together. She keeps a feeble shape, while her heart beats louder and the timbre jostles her into more splintered pieces. The moment he leaves, they'll fall softly to the sheets, then be blown under her bed by the breeze of the open window. Over broken floorboards, above a lullaby that no longer plays.

He shifts when he cannot smell the salt on her cheeks anymore. Her hand darts to his, pulling him closer until neither can feel the warm air between their bodies – only the frost spiraling out from both of them.

She brushes her lips along his knuckles and sighs, "Stay a little longer."

"Until?" he asks.

Her eyes flutter closed, her lips pricking his shoulder when she says, "Until you get hungry."


End file.
